This year is proving to be busy for religious schools. The Council for Christian Colleges and Universities is in two lawsuits relating to LGBTQ equality. Seattle Pacific University, a CCCU member institution, has dealt with three of its own lawsuits just this year.
SPU has been at the focal point of the LGBTQ debate before. Students successfully pressured their Board of Trustees to remove restrictions on student same-sex relationships. However, in May 2020 they discovered that the board did not remove the rule barring same-sex relationships for faculty.
Jéaux Rinedahl was an adjunct professor in the University’s nursing program. When the school opened a full-time position, he applied. Rinedahl said in an NBC interview that he and “his superiors at SPU were excited.”
However, this did not last. The once-excited assistant dean of nursing had to tell him he did not qualify for a full-time position at SPU because he was married to a man. This caused Rinedahl to file a lawsuit against the university for workplace discrimination.
After a year and a half of being in court, Rinedahl settled out of court with SPU. They have agreed to keep the settlement confidential, it is not known why Rinedahl settled.
However, Rinedahl’s experience with SPU stirred chaos on SPU’s campus. His case would eventually lead students to do a 38-day sit-in at the end of the 2022 spring semester. They threatened a lawsuit if the SPU Board of Trustees did not remove the hiring policy by June 1.
Their protests were reported by national media outlets. This attention moved Washingtonians and SPU students to send complaints against the University to Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson. These letters prompted Ferguson’s office to send its own letter to SPU to see if it was breaking Washington law, specifically the Washington Law Against Discrimination.
Following a series of emails where the university refused to answer any questions or provide any documents, SPU filed a lawsuit in federal court on June 27. Ferguson’s office responded by asking the judge to dismiss the case.
The university argued that since it is a religious school hiring religious employees, the First Amendment protects them from investigation. Ferguson also issued a statement on the lawsuit, claiming, “The lawsuit demonstrates that the University believes it is above the law to such an extraordinary degree that it is shielded from answering basic questions from my office regarding the University’s compliance with state law.”
After hearing oral arguments on Oct. 26, Reagan Appointee Judge Robert Bryan dismissed the case. The University still says that Ferguson has no right to investigate its hiring policies despite the court ruling. Yet, Ferguson said his “Civil Rights Division is still conducting its investigation into the university’s hiring practices.”
The students ended their sit-in on June 1.
So far, nothing has happened with the case. A group of students and faculty who support the lawsuit say that the University’s legal team intends to file an anti-SLAPP motion (a motion for case to be struck out of court, due to public concern) in an Oct. 21 email.
Shifting focus to the CCCU, it has filed multiple friend-of-the-court briefs for the defendants in YU Pride Alliance v. Yeshiva University,both in the U.S. Supreme Court and in the New York Supreme Court. These amicus briefs are simply an outside party contributing their own opinion for the court to consider.
In this case, the court must decide whether Yeshiva University can deny YU Pride’s request to become an official club under New York City law. JBU filed with the CCCU in both briefs sent to the New York Court.
In another case, Hunter et al. v. Department of Education, the CCCU is an intervenor. This means that even though the plaintiffs are not suing the CCCU, the court treats the CCCU as a defendant because the case directly affects them. The CCCU has remained involved since originally intervening on May 12, 2021.
In this case, a group of plaintiffs is suing the Department of Education for having a religious exemption in Title IX. The 33 original plaintiffs who are all LGBTQ students and alums of religious institutions are working with the Religious Exemption Accountability Project to litigate their case. The case argues for “the U.S. Department of Education to stop granting religious exemptions to taxpayer-funded religious colleges and universities that discriminate against and abuse their LGBTQ students.”
Out of the five cases above, John Brown University stands to lose the most from Hunter et al. The other four do not create any new precedents in either Arkansas or federal law. This is because all three of Seatle Pacific’s cases involve the Washington Law Against Discrimination, and Yeshiva has to do with the New York City Human Rights Law.
When asked how these four cases would affect Arkansas, John Brown University Professor Dr. Miguel Rivera said the court’s decision “can be used to help persuade courts in another state but is not binding and does not count as precedent in another state.”
This means that outside of SPU’s lawsuit against Ferguson and Hunter et al., these cases carry little legal weight at the University. If a lawsuit were to come against John Brown however, the legal teams can reference them to persuade the court into siding with them.
When asked how Hunter et al. would affect schools like John Brown University, Dr. Rivera said, “Should the courts move to block Title IX’s religious exemptions, the landscape of religious-based education would change in dramatic ways. Religious-based schools may be forced to do some or all of the following or be subject to legal liability and regulatory enforcement actions:
- Hire and retain openly gay and transgender professors.
- Allow transgender students to reside in the dorms of their preferred gender, regardless of physical or genetic gender.
- Allow transgender student athletes to compete against students who are of their preferred gender (e.g., transgender females competing against biological females).
- Allow transgender students to use the locker rooms and restrooms of their preferred gender.
- Formally recognize LGBTQ and transgender student clubs and student activities …
- Allow open same-sex dating [for] students and faculty.
- Potentially allow same-sex couples to use the University chapel for marriage ceremonies – if that use is allowed [for] heterosexual couples.”
There is another choice for schools if the courts side with Hunter though. If the schools don’t change their policies, they can elect to stop receiving money from the government.
When asked how the case could affect JBU, Kim Hadley, chief operating officer, said, “Decisions by the Department of Education can affect government sources of student financial aid, which would include government student loans and grants, including the Pell Grant.”
She also said that the University “would seek alternative funding sources and cost efficiencies to help mitigate the impact.”
However, she could not guarantee that the University would “be able to close that gap entirely.” She said there would likely be “programmatic changes to reduce the cost of education [which would have a] negative impact on the experience of JBU students.” The university has historically been financially healthy, but “there are too many data points to speculate on the long-term impact on the University.”
The CCCU has this to say about Hunter et al.:
“This lawsuit would take federal financial aid away from hundreds of thousands of students. … Seven out of 10 CCCU students receive federal funding, and the withdrawal of financial aid … would have a disproportionate impact on low-income and first-generation college students, as well as students from racial and ethnic minority groups.”
The CCCU’s website works with the assumption that its member institutions will reject federal aid instead of removing the offending policies. However, these statements are non-binding, meaning that the CCCU would not make the University keep these policies if the courts go in favor of the plaintiff.
The CCCU also said that “this lawsuit presents frivolous legal claims.” Dr. Rivera is not as confident, saying, “It is difficult to predict how the courts will come out on these cases.”
He is more confident that “this issue will eventually make it to the United States Supreme Court.” In the 584 days since the plaintiffs filed this lawsuit, the courts have yet to dismiss the case. It remains in the U.S. District Court for Oregon, and if appealed would go to the 9 Circuit.
Photo thanks to Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash